Two Systems. One Choice.

Jeffrey Sachs, one of the world’s most respected economists, wrote an open letter this week warning that Europe and Russia are sliding into open war. He’s pleading with political leaders to choose diplomacy over escalation.

Sachs is worth listening to carefully. This is not a man who simply observes from the outside. He is someone who has spent decades understanding what actually creates war: the economic desperation, the broken diplomacy, the scarcity thinking that makes enemies out of neighbours. He knows what conditions make peace possible. He has sat at those tables. And when a man like that says we are sliding toward catastrophe, it carries weight.

He’s right to be alarmed.

But I want to zoom out even further. Because what we’re watching isn’t just a geopolitical failure. It’s a systems failure. And it follows a logic as old as civilization:

Competition leads to scarcity.

Scarcity leads to fear.

Fear leads to war.

War leads to death.

We’re somewhere in the middle of that sequence right now.

Sachs is calling on chancellors and presidents to change course. And yes, they should. But here’s the story we’ve all been quietly told our whole lives: “that it’s up to them.” That we are small. That what we think, feel and build doesn’t really matter. That history is made by the powerful, and we just live in it.

And to make it worse, we are told that our only real power is to give our vote away once every four years. And the moment we do? Shut up. You’ve had your say. Now sit back and watch whatever unfolds, whether you like it or not. No voice. No participation. No co-creation. Just compliance dressed up as democracy.

That story is a trap. And we keep walking into it.

Because if we believe we don’t matter, we don’t act. And if we don’t act, nothing changes. And we point at the headlines and say “see, I told you, nothing changes.” It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, and it keeps the machine running perfectly.

But pause for a moment. Step outside. And really look at what this planet is actually doing while we argue about power.

Right now, somewhere in a dying forest, an old tree is being kept alive by its neighbours, fed through an underground web of roots and fungi that science is only beginning to understand. Right now, a seed tinier than a grain of sand is cracking open a rock, not with force, but with the quiet, unstoppable longing to become. Right now, a bird weighing less than a handful of leaves is navigating thousands of miles across open ocean, guided by a sensitivity to the earth’s own magnetic pulse. Right now, light that left a distant star before humans existed is completing its journey, arriving here, touching this ground, this skin, this moment.

Is this a dead universe running on competition and fear? Hmm.. For me this is a cosmos of breathtaking intelligence, and it has always operated on a completely different logic:

Cooperation leads to abundance.

Abundance leads to generosity.

Generosity leads to love.

Love leads to life.

Syntropic Agriculture taught me this through soil. And everything that soil gives life to. A forest doesn’t wait for a president to decide to thrive. It builds succession: the most adapted plants opening the way for the ones that follow, each layer giving exactly what the next one needs, roots sharing nutrients with strangers, abundance grown together rather than taken. Is this hope as wishful thinking? I think it’s rather hope as *evidence.* The intelligence of life is already here, already working, in every root network, every cracking seed, every migrating wing.

And here’s what I keep coming back to: we live in an age of extraordinary external speed. Information, conflict, crisis, noise, all accelerating. But the one direction nobody is rushing toward is “inward.”

That’s where the real work is.

Because inside is where stillness lives. And in stillness, we find our connection: to ourselves, to each other, to the vast intelligence that underlies all of this. Call it consciousness. Call it nature. Call it the living wisdom that has been quietly building this universe, through cooperation, for billions of years.

That wisdom doesn’t live in policy papers or military budgets. It lives in the mystery surrounding us every single day. In the way a seed knows how to become a tree. In the way roots find each other in the dark. In the way life keeps finding a way toward more life.

This is our deepest guide. Forget the fear creating news cycle machine. Remember the consciousness that created the universe and still moves through us, if we are quiet enough to feel it. If we are humble enough to learn from it. If we are brave enough to co-create with it.

Everyone matters. Everyone carries momentum. Every choice to cooperate instead of compete, to connect instead of wall off, to meet the world with curiosity instead of prejudice, these are essential gestures. They are the actual fabric of what civilization could be.

We don’t have to invent a better world from scratch. We just have to remember how it’s always been done, and join in.

So yes… Care about what’s happening. Feel the urgency.

And then go inward. Plant something. Connect with someone. Refuse the smallness they assigned to you. Build the network of life, one relationship at a time.

Going inward isn’t escapism. It’s not a flight response. It’s how forests grow.

That’s how peace becomes possible.

🌿

*Lars / Wild Forest Garden*